Hope and Change

So I was working with one of my customers today, a small care facility in the Midwest with around 150 employees.  She had undergone an upgrade to a fair amount of their facility’s computers including their primary server and they were suffering through the usual bumps with such an upgrade.

While I was loading software I asked Mary – the HR Director – what she thought about the new healthcare bill.  Honestly, I expected her to go right to Medicare reimbursement and loss of income.  My mistake – she went right to her employees health insurance needs.

Remember, health insurance can’t be sold across state lines.  This particular state has just a handful of insurance companies that service the state.  When they were searching for a provider they found a single company that was willing to provide insurance to their employees.  They have already been notified by their provider that they may not be willing to cover their facility's employees, they are studying the bill further.

Obviously, this raises a problem so Mary has been checking into alternatives.  They currently spend between $1,000 - $1,500 per employee per month, an annual fee of approximately $15,000 per employee or $2,250,000 annually.  However, if they simply discontinue their health insurance plan, their annual cost per employee drops to a fine of approximately $3,000 per employee or a total annual cost of $450,000.  This represents a savings of $1,800,000 each and every year.  Care to guess what way they are leaning?

Hope and change you can believe in!